The Duran Podcast - Putin prepares BRICS Kazan payment system

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Putin prepares BRICS Kazan payment system

All right, Alexander, let's talk about Putin's recent trip to Mongolia, and then let's also discuss his recent appearance at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. And these two trips appear to be Russia's way of preparing for the BRICS summit in Kazan. We did get a lot of news about BRICS, uh, about BRICS uh, the BRICs applications, countries wanting to apply to enter BRICS over the past couple of weeks. Turkey, Malaysia, Azerbaijan, I believe has formally applied as well. And I may even be missing some countries. Algeria entered the BRICS Development Bank.

So a lot of activity taking place as far as entering BRICS while Putin is on these trips to Mongolia. and then he attends the Eastern Economic Forum. And China also hosted a forum and event with African nations as well. So obviously they are preparing. The current BRICs members are preparing for the big summit in Kazan, I believe in October. Absolutely. And importantly, a very senior Chinese official also attended this meeting in Vladivostok, the Far Eastern Economic Forum, which Putin, of course, was present at.

Now, before I discuss the BRICS aspect, I think it's important. Just one point I wanted to make is that Putin has shown a greater interest in developing the far east of Russia, in developing this area, Vladivostok, Habarovsk, all these regions in the far east than any other Russian leader since the time of Nikola. Nicholas II. Nicholas, it's our Nicholas the second. It's not a little known fact, but he took a very, very great interest in the far east of Russia, of course. It was just the time when the Russians had built the Trans-Siberian Railway. He was very, very interested in the Far East. He visited, he traveled to Japan before he became emperor. He was never able, obviously, to follow through. Communications and

transport were very different at that time. And of course, as we all know, the various crises that happened over the time period of his reign made it impossible. But no other leader since, not Lenin, not Stalin, not Khrushchev, not Brezhnev, not Gorbachev, no one, not Yeltsin, no one has visited the Far East, gone to Vladivostov, hosted world leaders there, taking an interest in the development of the region, a direct personal interest in the development of the region, to anything like the same extent as Putin himself has done. And, you know, he does what he often does. He goes, he meets people, he attends seminars and goes to universities, meet students.

He attends places like, you know, the shipping industry. He takes very much direct hands-on interest in all that's going on in the Far East. And of course, he uses the, he used this trip to the Far East to do two things. Firstly, to emphasize again that Russia is a Far Eastern and East Asian power. It is not just a European one. It has a direct presence in the Far East. It is part of the Asia Pacific world. He also, of course, is doing it to forge connections with various Far Eastern and East Asian countries.

So obviously he went to. Mongolia. He went to Mongolia in part to commemorate the Soviet and Mongolian victory over Japan at the Battle of Halkingol in August 1939, a battle that is of a huge historical consequence and completely unknown in the West and one which to a great extent shaped a lot of what happened subsequently in the Second World War. So he went to do that. But it was a great extent. he also went there for practical reasons because he wants the Mongolians to agree to the building of the power of Siberia 2 pipeline. Apparently negotiations are now very advanced on completing that project. He's talking about the integration of the Far East of Russia in the East Asian,

Eurasian world. And of course, as you absolutely rightly say, he's preparing for bricks. So he recently went on a trip in the Far East. He visited Thailand. He visited Vietnam. Thailand is clearly now indicating that it wants to join the bricks. So is Malaysia. Malaysia is a major economic powerhouse. It's by the way a major chip producer. just saying it's a little known fact that Malaysia makes chips. It's Russia's second biggest supplier of chips after China. The Prime Minister of Malaysia was in the Far East, at the summit meeting in Vladivostok. He has now confirmed that his country wants to join Bricks. Just a few weeks ago in Moscow, Putin hosted the president-elect of Indonesia.

An emerging economic colossus, the president of Indonesia also spoke about the friendship between Russia and Indonesia, talked about the development of strong ties between the Soviet Union and Indonesia in the 1960s, spoke about wanting to build it back those ties and to forge new relationships with Russia. He's obviously planning eventually to navigate towards the bricks. Turkey now has apparently made a formal application to join the bricks. How real that is, nobody seems to quite know. The Turkish government itself is being very reticent about it. And of course, Turkey is still in NATO.

and Algeria, as you correctly say, has joined the Briggs Bank and all of that. So all of this preparing the ground for the big key summit meeting in Kazan in October. Now, we know that Xi Jinping will be there. We know that Modi will be there. Modi confirmed it in a recent telephone call with Putin. And of course, Modi was also himself. in Moscow a few weeks ago. Apparently there's a consensus in India to support the BRICS. And the primary purpose will be to create lists of states that want to join BRICS and to sort out

the membership process. And the second priority will be to try and work on this payment and trade system, which is now a priority for the Chinese and for the Russians as the Americans try to disrupt the trade system by imposing secondary sanctions on anyone who wants to trade with these countries, including threats against their banking systems. So a lot is going on, an awful lot is going on. And it's not being talked about, and it's not being talked about in the West. But you can see that very methodically, very systematically, as is his way, Putin is putting all the pieces of the jigsaw together. Yeah, all the, all the pieces of bricks together.

Yeah, all the pieces of bricks. That's what, yeah, that's what this is all about is bricks. Bricks is the vehicle that Putin, that Chinese, India, Brazil, South Africa, all of the original members of bricks. This is the vehicle that they're going to use to remove the unipolar, world order, right? Yes, yes. That's it. Yeah. The one remaining piece of this particular puzzle amongst the original Brick states,

which Putin has not been speaking to, and it's interesting, is Lula in Brazil. And Lula, obviously, he seems to be of all the Briggs leaders, the one who's been playing a rather more ambivalent game, because he's clearly got connections with the Democrats of the United States. there's been now, I think, some evidence that the Americans helped with his election and his victory against Bolsonaro. Against that, Lula has spoken about the importance of establishing an alternative currency system to the dollar. In fact, he's gone further on this than any other Briggs leader, at least rhetorically. So, so far, it's interesting that Putin and Lula have not yet spoken.

that over the next few weeks, we're going to see a major telephone conversation or virtual meeting between them. There's obviously differences. Lula has tilted some of the brick states feel rather to the American side on Venezuela and those sort of things. But he remains, Lula remains, the one remaining big piece that Putin has to fit into the puzzle. Yeah, and for its part of the United States, what they're going to do to try to prevent the rise of bricks is outside of the regime changes and the wars is the sanctions. Yes. And they're going after the Chinese banks trying to disrupt trade, the secondary sanctions as well. This is going to be their main tool to disrupt bricks from coming together.

Yes. The problem with that game is that, of course, what it does is that it encourages the bricks in some ways because they do want to trade with each other. India needs oil from Russia and probably needs Russian investment as well in certain strategic industries. For example, China also wants energy with Russia. The Central Asian states, who the Americans have been particularly pressing at the moment, for them, they really have no alternative. to trade with Russia and China. I mean, it is absolutely their priority because all you have to do is look at a map and see why. And besides, the Russians and the Chinese are their main security protectors. The Mongolians are the same. By the way, you did a really good video on this, thumb their nose, at the thumb their finger at the ICC. Warren, they said, you know, this is ridiculous. We're not paying any attention to it. So what the bricks must therefore do is find their mechanisms to get

round the sanctions. Because what the sanctions are doing, yes, there are work rounds. You can always find work rounds. It's not difficult to find workgrounds. But whilst you're functioning inside the existing system. Finding workgrounds takes time and there's mental energy involved and it creates friction within the trading process. In order for trade to work efficiently, it must be smooth and payments must be smooth. So the Bank of India, the Central Bank of India has now said that It's absolutely fine for Indian banks to start establishing connections with the Russian interbank messaging system. So you can see that that's what they want to do. Remember, if currencies move through these interbank messaging systems that the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians have,

because it's not part of SWIFT, the US can't track them. So that already creates problems. And of course, if you can then set up alternative payment mechanisms, including through digital currencies, I know people have feelings about that. But one of the spurs for these countries to develop digital currencies is precisely in order to circumvent sanctions. And this is where blockchain and all that becomes important for them. If they can do that, if they can set up trading systems, then of course that weakens. the threat of all of these secondary sanctions. And it doesn't just weaken the threat of the secondary sanctions. It also creates an alternative trading system, which ultimately nullifies

the sanctions because the sanctions then become unenforceable. No, I mean, you know, CDBCs are fine if they're used for state to state transactions, for country to country transactions and settlements. I think people are 1,000% comfortable with that. It's always the fear is always if it starts to reach to a consumer, a personal level. Exactly. But if this CDPC is implemented, is used between BRIC's nations so they can trade and settle whatever transactions and trade that they have going on, you're not, I mean, the everyday person's not going to really have any contact with this type of system. that is exactly right. That's exactly what this is, what the intention here is. So that's how it's

going to work. In fact, the Russians, the Russian Central Bank has been giving out, because people in Russia, by the way, are suspicious of digital rubles as people are of digital currencies everywhere else. Anyway, the Russian Central Bank has been giving assurances that this is what this is about. And I think it is. I think that this is what it is about. They want to create safeguards so that they can trade with each other. And I suspect that one of the things that we're going to see is that the central banks will be playing a significant role in facilitating trade between these various currencies. And the banks within these states will be relating more closely with the central banks.

So I think something like that is probably in the works. I suspect that the outline mechanism has already been devised to a great extent. I think the Russians of the Chinese and probably the Indians have already been working on it to a great degree. The key thing is to get everybody there in Kazan to get the things initialed so that the process can then move on. and at the same time to gradually draw as many states as possible into the system so that it becomes not just a bricks, you know, confined to a small group of brick states, but essentially a global system, perhaps bigger ultimately than the global, the economic global system, the trading system, dominated by the US and its institutions. so that it can become an actual real alternative. So I think this is what the plan is. And you can see Putin working on it as a very systematically and methodically.

And I get to say, I think that one day when we get, when we find out what he's actually been doing over the last year, we will find that as apart from the various economic, domestic things of years, has to deal with. This is probably the single thing that has taken up most of his time. He's the actual management of the war in Ukraine, you know, the battlefield things. I'm sure he's left to his generals. I think he trusts his generals now. It's sorting up this global system that has been his priority. And he's been talking to all the key players, to the Chinese, to the Indians, the Malaysians, the Vietnamese, the Thais, the Arab states, remember, he visited the Arab States, the UAE and Saudi Arabia a few months ago. He's now been to Mongolia. He's spoken to the

Indonesians. This is what he has been working on hardest and longest. And he does it in the way that he always does. He consults widely, and he's very thorough and systematic in the way he goes about it. All right. We will end the video there at the durand.locals.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, bitchy, telegram, rockfin, and Twitter X, and go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch like the shirts we are wearing today. This video, the link is the description box down below. Take care.